Undeciphered thread of Ariadne's work "Tsar-fish". Abstract of the Astafiev novel

Viktor Petrovich Astafyev did not aspire to become a writer. Once after the victory, the front-line soldier had to hear how the invited writer read the lying war stories to the workers. Astafiev, awarded the "Order of the Red Banner" and the medal "For Courage", deeply insulted the words of untruth. The same night the story "Sibiryak" is born and together with it - the kneeling classic of Russian and Soviet literature. The work of Astafiev "King-fish" will be written to them later - in 30 years. And for the next 10 years, seriously wounded and shell-shocked, he will dream of a war in peacetime.

Before the service were: repressed father, tragically dead mother, orphanage. The classic deeply understood the war as a soldier of the front line, objectively, without "political tales of fairy tales" - from retreats along the Zhitomir highway with the "ripped off" corpses of "our own" in liquid mud to the bloodless forcible crossing of the Dnieper in the autumn of 1943. Without respite, without training, without water craft , Developing the success of the Kursk Bulge. (Then from the ordinary soldiers to the other shore only one in seven reached the river, most of the dead at the crossing of 300,000 simple guys just drowned).

However, he is much closer to the soul's mindset than the theme of the war, there were aspects of the interaction of nature and man, good and evil. "Something very important in the balance of" Nature - Man - Society "is broken," Astafyev intuitively understood. "Tsar-fish" its short content implies non-linear, multivariate. That's the genre - a philosophical novel! This is a story about a fisherman and not about a fisherman, about a fish and not about a fish. Let's figure it out! After all, the work of Astafiev - about all of us! In an almost fairy-tale epic manner, against the backdrop of rural life, the author gradually brings the thoughtful reader to the idea of repentance. The central character is the well-to-do master Ignatyitch, a lucky fisherman who does not disdain poaching. Once he saw a huge sturgeon, he understands: one can not cope with this. But greed takes precedence. Sturgeon is the "Tsar-fish". The brief content of the Astafyevsky work further brings us to the plot situation, when the sturgeon and the sturgeon and Ignatich, entangled in nets and hooks, equally risk their lives. The situation is allegorical. Death in equal measure threatens both. And only then the fisherman, trying to escape, remembers his sin - an unjust act against the woman Glasha. When the forces are almost gone, he repents from the heart, asking for forgiveness in absentia. After this, suddenly the lines are weakened, and mutual release begins.

Do you think that this is being written about fishing in a country where the KGB keeps a keen eye on the dissidents? What does the classic Aesopian language write about? What is important not to miss, trying to display the short stories "Tsar-fish" as accurately as possible?

In the era of stagnation Astafyev first finds the solution to the global pressing question: "How can we live on?" (After all, there is nothing ahead.) Obviously, the communism promised in five years will not come to Khrushchev.) What prevents us from moving forward, what holds us back ? And then the writer comes to enlightenment: we need to repent. And Astafiev, as a front-line soldier, as a citizen, does not hesitate to present this idea to the society in "Tsar-fish" in the only form in which it is possible not to become an outcast.

Later in his "Picnic on the Road" the Strugatsky brothers in the tightening final scene will also put in the mouth the protagonist, who is in the power of the anomalous zone, the salutary words of repentance and blessing to all people. It is noteworthy that in the future, the growing contradictions led to the fact that the theme of repentance was even more actualized than in the form that we introduced in Tsar-fish. Summary Astafyevsky's work certainly inspired the third classic, Victor Pelevin, for an episode in a snapping soul in his phantasmagoric novel The Sacred Book of the Werewolf. Turned into a lame and wretched wolf Mikhalych (Russian people), realizing the worthlessness of his condition and still repenting, sobs ask the Pied Cow (Russian Land) for him oil to survive and pay off the spongers. Pelevin finds for this really heartfelt and touching for the soul words ...

Let's return to the story. Her main idea is the vital necessity of repentance. Only thus will survive both the Man and the "Tsar-fish". The brief content of the Astafyevsky work leads us to an understanding of the relevance of repentance, which is fundamentally important both for each person and society as a whole. Classics need to hear in time. They, being the salt of the earth, beat the alarm over a decade before the cataclysm. Perhaps, then, in the 70's, civilized by resolving the contradictions and becoming a democratic country, having exposed its unpleasant historical pages and repenting, we would have warned of the collapse of the superpower. We would become more open and understandable, without giving a chance to R. Reagan in 10 years to force the Western World to simultaneously show us financial sanctions, declaring us an "Empire of Evil." After all, in 1974 the USSR was not yet doomed.